A batch of Katharine Hepburn’s personal papers, most of them never before available to biographers, has been deposited by her executors at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. They include letters, photographs, scripts, scrapbooks, and notes relating to Hepburn’s theatrical career, which included “The Philadelphia Story ” George Bernard Shaw’s “The Millionairess,” and Shakespeare, as well as less illustrious productions, such as “West Side Waltz,” and the troubled “Coco,” a musical about the life of Coco Chanel.

According to the curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the library, Bob Taylor, Hepburn kept her personal papers in her Turtle Bay home. After her death in 2003, her executors, the “Nightline” co-anchor Cynthia McFadden and a lawyer, Erik Hansen, decided to deposit the papers relating to her film career (which are the larger portion) at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and those relating to her stage career at the New York Public Library.

“The New York Public Library has the pre-eminent theater collection in the country, so it’s appropriate that the theater materials are here,” Mr. Taylor said. “Probably 90% of these have never been seen.”

Judging from a small selection of the papers made available to journalists — the total quantity stretches some 30 linear feet — they aren’t likely to expose any closely held secrets. They do, however, provide insight into how Hepburn approached her theatrical work, and her relationships with other actors, such as Sir Laurence Olivier, Judy Garland, Henry Fonda, and Peter O’Toole.

The author of the well-reviewed 2006 biography, “Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn,” William Mann, said he did not have access to these papers for his book, but that he will include them in a later edition. (The materials at the Margaret Herrick Library were available earlier, and he incorporated hose in the paperback edition.)

“I’m thrilled that they’re finally going to be open,” Mr. Mann said f the papers in an interview.

There are materials from Hepurn’s theatrical exploits at Bryn Mawr College; a 1928 photograph of her, at 21, in a play called “The Big Pond,” from which she was red after one performance, and letter, from the writer and director David Wallace to the producer George C. Tyler, recommending Hepburn as “a young actress of possibilities.” (He notes: he has the advantage in playing well-bred parts that she comes from a good family.”)

After her film career took off, Hepburn’s stage appearances were sporadic. In 1939, after she had been labeled “box office poison,” she came back to New York for “The Philadelphia Story.” In 1950, she played Rosalind in “As You Like It,” directed by Michael Benthall. Despite being critically panned, the production ran for five months on Broadway and then went on tour.

A typed manuscript labeled “Katharine Hepburn’s History of the As You Like It Tour 1950–51” comprises detailed entries for each city the company played in. Included are descriptions of the car journey, box office figures, whether they should have stayed longer or left sooner, the dimensions of the stage, and phone numbers of local doctors who had been recommended, in case anyone in the cast needed one.

The parts in Hepburn’s voice are humorous. She describes her hotel in Hershey, Penn., where the walls were so thin she could hear the man in the next room assessing that evening’s performance to someone on the phone. She complains about a young reporter in Kansas City “who thought ‘As You Like It’ was the story of the twins.”

In the most entertaining episode, Hepburn and her chauffeur were arrested for speeding halfway between Tulsa, Okla., and Wichita, Kan. “A handsome and extremely irritating and drawling Oklahoman [policeman]” dragged them into the nearest town, where they waited for a lawyer to present them with a $20 fine.

At one point, Hepburn, pacing, backed into the gas stove and singed her fur coat. She recounts: “Cox [the lawyer] said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful coat. You must have paid $700 for it.’ I am ashamed to say that I was cheap enough to answer, ‘Certainly not. $5,500.00.’ And he just looked pathetic and I must say I felt awfully moronic.”

Some of the juiciest material here is likely to be that relating to “Coco,” the Alan Jay Lerner-André Previn musical that opened in 1969. During the production, Hepburn fought with Lerner, the producer Frederick Brisson, and, most viciously, the scenic and costume designer, Cecil Beaton. Her close friend Spencer Tracy had recently died, and Hepburn “was very insecure,” Mr. Mann said. “It was the one time in her life that she really behaved unprofessionally.”

The papers at the library include her marked-up script for “Coco” and other notes on the production. There is a handwritten (though not necessarily by her) copy of a post-performance speech she gave, a few days after the Kent State shootings in May 1970. According to Mr. Mann, she initially opposed the idea of saying anything, and the speech itself is restrained. “[Y]ou may call them rebels or rabble rousers or anything you please,” she said to the audience about the students who were killed. “Nevertheless they were our kids and our responsibility.”

Although she may have objected to bringing anti-war politics into the theater, Hepburn stood up for free speech when it suited her as an actress. At a climactic moment in the play, after Coco’s latest collection had been panned, Hepburn would walk downstage and say quietly, “S—,” to laughter. When the production went to Los Angeles, the producers there made her commit in her contract to changing the word. But Hepburn found that nothing else drew the same reaction and wrote to the producers begging them to let her reinstate it.

“In an era of literature and cinema and theatre where every other expression is a four letter word — it is — let’s face it — curiously head in the sand to prohibit the use of the least offensive of these expressions.” When one considers that this was three years after the opening of “Hair,” and only four years before the young playwright David Mamet would burst onto the scene with his expletive-filled plays, one can’t help but agree with her.

In some ways, what is not in Hepburn’s papers is as significant as what is in them. There are fan letters and professional correspondence, but little correspondence that is deeply personal. In the collection at the Margaret Herrick Library, Mr. Mann said, there are, remarkably, no letters or telegrams from Tracy. After his death, Hepburn promulgated the story that they were lovers, but Mr. Mann argues in his book that, while they were close and dependent friends, Tracy had affairs with men, and Hepburn’s most significant relationships were with women, like the actress Laura Harding.

“Letters from Tracy or Laura Harding, or anybody who was more private in her life, probably would have gone immediately into the fireplace,” Mr. Mann said. “She always had an eye on: ‘How do I keep the legend in the spotlight? How do I keep giving the public what I want to give them, rather than revealing something that I don’t want to?'”